rupinder singh

I suppose vasakhi is only important to people who are interested in being blessed with amrit or helping others take amrit. Otherwise what other meaning will it have in peoples lives other than a Punjabi jatt harvest festival. Vasakhi is when a Sikh is born, when a Sikh commits themselves to a jeevan, when they give their “sees peth”. If we fail to understand that then really we might as well treat it as another pointless pagan festival. Have you taken khanday da phaul yet Ford Capri?

With humilty come to the Gurdwara, do ardas and ask Guru Ji's blessing before you start your sewa. You will then find out how to clean urininals properly.

I remember reading this article once. http://www.panthic.org/news/129/ARTICLE/1179/2005-04-03.html

1,000,000 Chaupai Sahibs nationally. http://www.sikhsangat.com/index.php?showtopic=41675

Back to basics!!. What better role of the Gurdwara then to provide the environment to sit in the Sangat roop and to partake in Langer in the Pangat roop. The “innovations” are just our egos thinking that the core activities within a Gurdwara are not adequate enough. At the end of the day whatever social esteems we have, our aim is to realize it’s the spiritual needs which are core. The trap that the Sikh community are falling into is that we think we need to sell the Gurdwara as a product catering for the personal needs of all. We think that we need a cake cutting soft party room or ladies aerobic centre or or elderly day centre or bouncy castle facilities. We want to arrange comedy nights and fun days to attract punters. If anything, this could be digressive for our spiritual progression. Think back to the times of our puratan ancestors. Did they bog themselves down with this kind of concern?

I have only done this once but i wish to participate in something similar but in july i took part in the fulcrum challenge which is helping kids of 17 and 18 develop leadership skills, anyway i raised 1550 pounds for charity and a guy called Jack Petchey he doubled the amount of what i raised and 20 others and the money went to the people of Botswana a certain town in the country, I helped build foundations of a office which the community can later build the office which they could sell reeds from the river delta which is about 50metres away from where we built the foundations for the office. Also we went to a school which is run by an American man who has been a head teacher of many schools and is well known for his charity work for kids, he runs the school with his own funding, he does not get funded by the government and we went there and he asked us to build like a shelter like a green house but different so they could plant vegetables and it would keep the animals out such as parrots and the dogs and also the elephants when they wonder in to the school area. anyway i thought id share this as i havent talked about it for ages and i am very proud of my work i done in Botswana, ps i was meant to get 70 UCAS points for this BUT i chose not to take them as i done this to help the kids and for the experiance also it was hard being one of the only vegetarians there lol had to cook my own food http://www.fulcrum-challenge.org/main/ see the link! That sounded like a great inspirational sewa! Well done Singh. It seems rare to see Sikhs who really get down to the knitty gritty hands on sewa. We have some amazing examples like Bhagat Puran Singh, however as a community we don't seem to recognise as much about his jeevan as we should. The real essence of Sikh Sewa needs to be projected out of the 4 walls of the Gurdwara and expressed on the street. We might run the best langar kitchens but if it's only feeding our chubby relatives then is it truly Sarbat Da Bhalla??

The lack of response to your post and from my personal experiences I think the answer is quite simply NO. You are probably correct in your observation regarding registered Sikh charities, there may be a few hundred of those but most, if not all, will be prabhandak committee structures managing the property funds of Gurdwaras. I think as a community we have been manipulated and emotionally blackmailed into funding building extension after building extension or the next newest multi million pound computerized gurdwara buildings which we can label as institutes or academies. The truth is in visible charity work the UK Sikh community have little to show but in property asset building we probably have an impressive portfolio. If it’s charity work you want to get involved in then hook up with your local Samaritan groups and see if there’s something you can do.

Is this the attack outside the Mortimers club? The area and the times suggest it was more of a "wrong time wrong place" scenario as a pose to a specific relgious hate attack. 3.30 am outside skydome is full of drunken clubbers trying to get home. Unfortunate for the 2 lads, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is it a bit presumptuous to assume that 'Sikhs' were targeted by 'Muslims'?

We are so sooo lame. Lame Lame Lame! Lamer than lame. Lame with a capital “L”. If I could get a pound for every time someone points out how lame the panth of today is I’d have paid off my mortgage. It’s great how again we love homing in on the avguns and negative elements in order to justify our self importance. There is a half full glass out there, it may look half empty to many but to some it will always be half full. The panth flourishes, whether fat or thin. The Asa Di // resonates in every Guru Ghar every morning in the UK, the parkash of Guru Granth Sahib Ji illuminates the world 365 days of the year, the kitchens serve langar to millions and millions every year, the emotionally venerable gain strength in the 4 walls of the Guru Ghar, the non believers become believers in the Guru Ghars. In the midst of those thousands of shardawallay individuals, you get some fat individuals, some immodest dressed individuals, some individuals with nail polish. In their vulnerability, they don’t have the superior goggles that the rest of us have to point out their negative traits. Maybe, with the Grace of Akal Purakh they will see life differently, but isn't there more optimism in focusing in on what's going on right rather than what's not!

Like who?

Thanks for raising awareness of the issue. I will fax today. It’s a shame that as a community we have not done enough to support the persecuted Afghani Sikhs and other minorities within Afghanistan.

Well done to the sewadars. We wanted to organise something when we were at Uni but couldn't get it together.

Is Baba Hardev Singh Lulonwale in the UK? I heard his katha on Amrit Bani and it seemed to be live from Smethwick Gurdwara. Is anyone uploading the kathas?

Maybe Pappu thought the corpse was just one of his illegal workers having a kip.

I can't see anyone denying anyones right to claim their "sikh"hood. A Sikh is a progressive individual who adopts a way of life and a way of thinking given to us by the Gurus. I suppose our drawbacks are in our interpretations of what "progessive" is.

Let me clarify what I wrote earlier: not all Sikhs before the British invaded Punjab were amritdhari or keshadhari or 'pagh wale' That particular point is a fact just as it is today. Not every SIkh is an amritdhari or keshadhari. However, at no point did I say that you didn't need kesh or didn't need to take amrit on your life journey. You do! But you are kidding yourself if you believe that everybody in Punjab was keshadhari or amritdhari before the British invaded!! Many were, i'm not denying that. The names that we all know from history were such and countless more whose names we don't know too, I'm sure, and yes Bhai Nand Lal too! But every single person? That was what the original poster asked and I tried to answer. Sarbloh, I can understand your feelings, but factually you were incorrect to use Sukhdev Singh Sukha and Harjinder Singh Jinda as examples. They were clean-shaven and cut hair young men when they joined the movement. Throughout their struggles they both kept and cut their hair, but towards the end of their journey's, still quite some time before they were hung, they did take amrit and keep their kesh. Were they Sikhs before they kept their kesh? I have no doubt they were. Is it vital for a Sikh to keep their kesh? Yes, but only when they yearn to do so from inside. Keeping kesh for the sake of it or as a general rule goes against the Sikh ethos: we don't get caught up in meaningless rituals and garbs. I agree with the sentiments of the posters above, but disagree with the logic. I don't believe that keeping kesh and taking amrit is a means to an end, I believe that it is the ultimate culmination, vital to emancipation. Some of us do it earlier, fine, but what are we saying here? That anyone who does not keep kesh is not a Sikh? One of the previous posters has made that very statement. I vehemently disagree. No-one can tell somebody whether they are a Sikh or not. You neither have the right, nor the position. From a Worldly point of view you can, but that is meaningless to anybody other than the census researchers or grant authorities. OK point taken, some of the famous Gursikhs that we know of were mona at certain times, we have seen that. However whenever we remember them we remember them in their GurSikh roop (yes that keshdari roop). Why the energy and focus on proving certain Gursikhs were specifically monay? What do you want to emphasise, that keeping kes is so difficult that one must be pure on the inside first. In reality this doesn't happen to most of us and keeping the outer form is the way of projecting our inner form. The world views a Sikh in a certain way. A turban and uncut hair. What confuses the world is when we change the parameters in order to justify our own lifestyles. It's dangerous because it confuses people, it confuses our community. It's the fact that we don't have a united belief on many issues that we have fallen into these dark ages of confusion, where someone says drop the kes, or drop the kirpan or drop the nit-nem and we are willing to do that. What do you want to gain by continuously highlighting Sukha and Jinda cutting their hair for certain reasons and not emphasizing at what state they were when they took their shaheedia? Why do you want to jump to conclusion that Bhai Nand Lal was a mona just because we cant see "Singh" in his signature or references. Why do you want to make out keeping kes is an obstacle rather than progessive? Maybe I am reading between the lines but certainly Dasmesh Regiment and Yourself seem to be adament on proving this theory, not just in this thread but in some others prior.

Well said. Our "Sianpa", "Chaturai", fickle intelligence forces us to interpret and decipher what we want to as individuals. That’s why we fall in the trap of only reading scholars, historians or clerics views, a bit like the muslims have to in order to interpret the over elaboration of the Koran. At the end of the day we have the Guru’s Shabad and the GurMantar which can elevate us beyond the confusing interpretations or confusing views... if we so chose to accept that!

Dasmesh Regiment would be one weak regiment if they didn’t want to look the Dasmesh pita. It’s a simple scenario, if one really wants to be a disciple of a Guru then what better expression than adopting the appearance of your Guru. Anyway there are some nice convenient history books that say justifies the destruction of kes for those who wish to adopt that thinking, one can refer to the RSS libraries for those kind of books.

thats quite an allegation there...can you please elaborate on the beadbi that 'may' have been committed at Khalsa School? I think if we need to stop deviating from the real issue rather than witch-hunting individuals or jathas. Question is, if as a collective sangat we don’t have the capacity to maintain maryada in a Sikh school, then what purpose does the Sikh school serve to the community? If it only becomes a place which maintains a syllabus as per government guidelines at the expense of discarding maryada then there’s no point in the existence of a Sikh school. A collective sangat in my opinion is made up of not just the board of governor, committee or headmaster but also parents and individual Sikhs like you and me. This goes beyond any quick fixes or temporary maintenance, but involves long term commitment from everyone if they feel there is a purpose for a Sikh school. The fact that there is a discard for maryada within this Gurdwara highlights that Sikhs within that locality do need feel the need for a Sikh school.

Point taken. Is the question then whether there is a need for the Khalsa School? Should there even be a Gurdwara within this school? What is the current pupil count because as far as I know I don't know any of my relatives from that part of the world who send their kids to the Khalsa School.

Gurkirpa Singh or Guruka Singh

lol. I don't think I am worth of all your attention. Anyway, one idea for the concerned locals. Why not book the Gurdwara for a weekly keeran diwan? Start getting locals to feel they are part of the sangat of this Gurdwara. It's an ideal location for a smagam. This way locals will start identifing that a gurdwara exits which needs sangat commitment.

Now that's a name!

It's Rupin"D"er my dear friend. But you can call me rupiner too. I studied in London and spent some time in the land of Essex. I got into Sikhi after attending the Sikh Student Camps in 2003/04 held at GS Khalsa college so have some fond memories of the college. But I do remember that noone locally visted the college for darshan of Maharaj even though the gates were always open.

A school is an institution designed to allow and encourage puplis to learn, under the supervision of teachers. The teachers are supervised by heads of department who are supervised a person called a Headmaster. I think this structure is fairly universal and not particular to just this specific school. I remember my school being run by a headmaster who was the most senior member of staff. There maybe a board of governers who may have a say in the running of a school. This is a private school. Private schools, or independent schools, are schools not administered by local, state, or national government, which retain the right to select their student body and are funded in whole or in part by charging their students tuition rather than with public (state) funds. That means it makes it's money from the mummy and daddys paying the school for their kids Here's a link if you need to enrol. http://www.ggskcollege.co.uk/ Here someone's opinion on Headmaster Sahib AS Toor and some views on his business. http://www.panthic.org/discussion.php?id=4426 Pheew. Daas hope he's answered your queries.